CULTURE METHODS VERSUS FLOW CYTOMETRY FOR THE COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF EUGENIA CARYOPHYLLATA THUNB. (MYRTACEAE) ESSENTIAL OIL
CRINA MARIA SAVIUC1, ALEXANDRU MIHAI GRUMEZESCU2, CORALIA BLEOTU1, ALINA MARIA HOLBAN1, MARIANA CARMEN CHIFIRIUC1, PAUL BALAURE2, GENTIANA PREDAN, VERONICA LAZAR1
1Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest, Ale. Portocalelor 1-3, Bucharest, Romania
2Faculty of Applied Chemistry and Materials Science, “Politehnica” University of Bucharest, 1–7 Polizu Street, 011061 Bucharest, Romania
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Opportunistic yeasts especially belonging to Candida sp. have been recognized
lately as major fungal pathogens. Treatment of fungal infections, particularly nosocomial
ones, has lagged behind bacterial chemotherapy and there are substantially fewer antifungal
than antibacterial drugs due to the toxic side effects (fungi being eukaryotic cells similar in
structure with the host cells) and to limited solutions for the development of new classes of
antifungal agents. On the other hand, the lack of standardization and laborious available
techniques led to an increasing interest for developing new rapid techniques for assessing
the antifungal activity of different compounds. Our aim was to optimize a flow cytometry
based method to test the antifungal susceptibility to essential oils, counting as a rapid
method able to indications about presumptive action mechanism of essential oil from
Eugenia caryophyllata dried buds (cloves).
